Woodman locates breath at the site where the body refuses the pneumatic project. The pneumatic move is exhalation — release, transcendence, the upward rush, spirit departing the body's density. What she points toward is the inhale: the moment the body opens and receives what is not yet known, what has not been controlled, what comes in on its own terms. That is the motion most ordinary spiritual practice systematically bypasses. You can make an entire practice out of letting go, of emptying, of ascending — and never once train yourself in reception.

The word she uses — *incarnate* — is doing precise work. The feminine principle is not an idea here, not an archetype held at the level of concept; it is enacted in the body every few seconds whether the ego cooperates or not. The body keeps drawing in the world. The question the passage presses is whether consciousness participates in that drawing-in or whether it holds itself slightly apart, managing the breath rather than surrendering to the fact that something foreign, unowned, outside the ego's jurisdiction enters and alters the interior with every cycle. Reception is not passive; it changes what receives it. That is what the ego, trained in the pneumatic preference for ascent, finds most difficult to tolerate.